This invention relates to mobile fluid delivery systems in general. More particularly, this invention relates to vehicle mounted fluid delivery systems for delivering desired amounts of fluid to a delivery area while a vehicle is in motion.
Mobile fluid delivery systems are used in a wide variety of applications, including weed abatement and control, fertilizer application for agricultural and landscaping purposes, mobile spray paint applications, and the like. In all such systems, a fluid delivery system is mounted on a vehicle, the fluid delivery system including one or more fluid ejectors mounted on appropriate portions of the vehicle in a manner designed to deliver the fluid in the appropriate pattern. For example, in weed control applications, a series of spray nozzles is typically mounted transversely of the rear of the vehicle and on a fixed or movable arm extending from one or both sides of the vehicle so that an appropriate herbicide can be sprayed in a pattern extending generally perpendicular to the path of the vehicle as well outwardly from the side of the vehicle. In the past, the fluid delivery system has typically been arranged for manual operation by the driver of the vehicle or an occupant of the vehicle. More recently, systems have been introduced (for weed control applications) in which automatic operation of the fluid delivery system is made possible by the use of a foliage sensing unit which generates a control signal indicating the presence of a weed to be sprayed with an herbicide.
All known mobile fluid delivery systems suffer from the disadvantage that potentially interfering obstacles, such as trees, telephone poles, boulders and the like must be taken into account when designing or operating a system. For example, for railroad weed control systems, care must be taken to ensure that any portion of the fluid delivery system which extends laterally of the rail truck be limited in length to avoid striking obstacles encountered along the side of the rail bed. This limits the lateral extent to which a weed control herbicide can be applied. For non-rail vehicles, such as herbicide spraying trucks and fertilizer trucks, the vehicle must be operated in such a manner as to maneuver around obstacles such as trees, telephone poles, boulders and the like. As a consequence, the efficiency with which such mobile fluid delivery systems can be operated is severely impaired, both with respect to the time required to complete a given fluid delivery project and the monetary cost of doing so.